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Room Mom Rules

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I am a teacher and have held the position of room parent volunteer (aka The RoomMom). After many years of working with parents in my classroom and volunteering to help other teachers, here is the boiler plate of what has worked for me.

  1. Do not abuse the class e-mail list. I think e-mails to the families should be limited to holiday parties and class gifts unless the teacher has asked you to contact families. An example of an “extra” e-mail might be help with drivers for a field trip.
  2. Aside from teacher gift and party e-mails to parent volunteers, only send e-mails when requested by the classroom teacher.
  3. Offer to collect for a group gift at holidays/end of the year, but do not make the contribution mandatory. Suggest an amount for the donation to the gift fund but make it clear that the amount is a guideline. Parents should not feel obligated to contribute. And, if you know you have a community where contributing would be difficult, don’t even ask.
  4. This is an addendum to #3. If you are purchasing a group gift, use a generic but personal policy. In most cases, you probably do not have a personal relationship with the teacher. Generic gift cards are best (Visa, AmEx, etc.). Teachers love when the generic gift card is accompanied by a little something that shows you are aware the teacher works hard with your child every day. For the past several years, I created a Favorite Books Bookmark to go with the gift card at the end of the year, so the teacher has something with which to remember the class.
  5. If you are not the official room mom but want to help, sign up on the class volunteer sheets and wait to be contacted. Too many cooks in the kitchen creates confusion. Teachers can only handle so many parent volunteers.

If you have school aged children, what reminders and information would you like to receive from the room parent, and what information should be the classroom teacher’s domain?

The Puffin Test

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If you are a Pinterest addict member, you may have seen one or two pins that show pancake batter baked in muffin tins. Here at theroommom’s house, we are all about breakfast that fits in your hand and can be eaten in the car on the way to school, so I thought this idea was worth a spin. I tested a variety of combinations and am reporting my findings below. To see the original pin, click here— and feel free to follow me on Pinterest at the same time.

The Basics: Mix up a batch of pancake batter and spoon into mini muffin tins. Sprinkle with any variety of toppings. Bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes or until golden at the edges. Eat immediately or let cool and freeze. If freezing, put puffins in Ziploc bags or tupperware. Can be removed one at a time and reheated in microwave or toaster oven.

The Pancake Batter: I used my Basic Pancake Recipe. I don’t think there is anything special about it, so if you have a great recipe for pancakes, use that one (and feel free to share!).

Tested Toppings:

  • blueberries, fresh and dried
  • mini chocolate chips
  • bacon (cooked and crumbled)
  • bacon and brown sugar
  • sausage (cooked and crumbled)
  • sausage with a drizzle of syrup

The Verdict: Both children like the chocolate chip version (big surprise). My daughter also likes the fresh blueberries. My son likes plain sausage. I like the bacon and brown sugar combination the best. Overall, I felt they were a little bland, and the pictures look better than the real thing. They have been handy this week for breakfast. We reheated in the toaster oven, so they developed a little toasty crust. I think they may need to be dipped in syrup, or I need a better pancake batter recipe. They just don’t have enough flavor for me.

Effective Peer Editing

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Behold. My first student writing assignment of the school year. These stories have three things going for them. They were all typed, so I do not have to decipher any bad 4th grade cursive. The students completed them at school, so I am fairly certain that this is student work, and I avoided any parent tampering. And finally, they were peer edited, so the spelling and grammar mistakes should be minimal (insert uncontrollable laughter here).

To teachers and students and parents who remember being a student, “peer edit” is usually the code name for socializing during class without anyone noticing. Well, never fear, theroommom is here. I actually have some peer editing strategies that might work for you. Not only can teachers use these in the classroom at any grade level, parents can use these techniques with their children at home without being tempted to over-help the child. Believe me, teachers know when a parent has had a heavy hand in a student’s paper!

What useful tips do you have to improve writing– adult’s or child’s?

Task 1

Have a classmate (or parent) read the essay aloud to the writer. Read EXACTLY what is on the page. If the paragraph does not contain a period, do not pause. If the author wrote “they’re” instead of “there”, read “they are”. If the author wrote “exited” instead of “excited”, pronounce it phonetically. The writer should be able to hear problems with punctuation, misspelled, and misused words. The writer should also hear missing information or disorganized ideas.

Task 2

Highlight the first word of every sentence in the essay and review the highlighted words. Do you have a variety of words or did you begin every sentence with the same word? Is there only one highlighted word in a whole paragraph– or even worse– the whole essay? That means you have forgotten punctuation somewhere. Are the highlighted words the same distance apart throughout the whole piece? That means you may be using only one type of sentence (like all simple sentences) when you should have a variety of sentence types and lengths. You can also have students count the number of highlighted words if you require a certain number of sentences in a paragraph. Five highlighted words should equal five sentences.

Task 3

Circle any helping verbs in the story even if the verb is not being used as a helping verb in that particular sentence. Remove half. This helps to fix passive voice even if you do not understand what passive voice is. I require that my fourth graders memorize the helping verb list some time around October, and it is such a useful tool for many grammar and writing tasks.

Task 4

Read the essay or story backwards one sentence at a time to the writer. The writer should be listening for problems with mechanics, not content. Read one sentence and stop. Check that each sentence has an action, a person/thing doing that action, and is a complete thought. In other words, do you have a complete sentence?

Novel Ideas

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Gather round readers. I am about to reveal a handful of literature gems. Each year, I teach about six novel studies with the whole class. We complete activities related to the book that hopefully enhance reading comprehension and improve critical thinking and writing skills. I have a wide range of readers, so I have to be careful with my book and activity choices. The plot of the book and writing assignments must be accessible to my lower readers but keep the higher readers engaged.

Below is a list some of my favorite literature activities. I am hoping you educators might see a novel idea (see how I slipped in that play on words?) that you could use in your classroom this year. But, I always need new ideas to keep things interesting. Do you have any suggestions for me?

Point of View Journals

  • After reading the first chapter of a book, each student selects one of the main characters. I ask them to re-tell the chapter from the point of view of the selected character. We share samples with the whole class and compare the differences in the re-telling. Why is one character’s story different from another? The students complete this task for every chapter, writing 4-5 sentences per chapter. The students stick with the same character throughout the book. Once students make their character choice, they may not change.
  • I used this with THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY by Sheila Burnford. We called them “Incredible Journals” and students became one of the three animals throughout the book.  I also used this activity with THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE by C.S. Lewis. Students had to choose Lucy or Edmund.

narnia map and journal sample

Antique Maps

  • Give each student a ledger sized piece of white copy paper (11×17). Legal paper will work too; letter sized is too small. Dip a tea bag in cold water for several minutes, carefully squeeze out excess water, and “paint” the entire piece of paper until it is a tannish color. Let paper dry. When it is dry, it will be this nice crinkly texture and look like parchment paper.
  • The students then create a map of the setting of the novel. For THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE by C.S. Lewis, students have to search for passages in the book that give clues about where key locations are in the story. They use the clues to build a map of Narnia. This is HARD for 4th graders! I have a Narnia Map Handout, and we do the first few locations together. Students are then allowed to work in pairs. In THE WHITE MOUNTAINS by John Christopher, the main characters travel from England to the Swiss Alps, but it is in the future after an alien invasion. Readers must use descriptions in the book and knowledge of maps of Europe to piece together the route the main characters take (used this with 6th graders).
  • I have also used the antique paper with an activity for THE EGYPT GAME by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. After researching pharaohs, students pretended they were a pharaoh. They created a name and wrote a description of their life as a pharaoh on the antique paper. If you have laser printers, you can print the story, then stain it with the tea bags. Ink jet printed papers will smear.

white mountains map cropped

 

Amazon Book Listing

  • Students design an Amazon book listing for THE LEMONADE WAR by Jacqueline Davies. The students wrote a catchy book summary and included basic book information. They also provided a “star” rating and provided three additional book suggestions in the “Frequently Bought Together” section, so we built a book recommendation list at the same time.
  • Grab the AMAZON BOOK LISTING TEMPLATE HERE.

Amazon book listing sample3

Character Resumes

  • We read a few sections of THE MISSING GOLDEN TICKET by Roald Dahl. This is a great book to kick off discussions about the writing process. It includes a chapter from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with an additional nasty character that Dahl edited out. My students design their own rotten child with a bad habit (a la the Chocolate Factory characters) and build a CHARACTER RESUME for that character. Not only does it help with characterization, it also is a good way to teach word processing skills.

character resume

Novel Newspaper

  • This will work with any novel. I have used it with DANNY, THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD by Roald Dahl. This is a culminating activity after finishing the book. The students create a DANNY NEWSPAPER with 3 articles. The first article is a feature article with quotes. The students must think like a reporter and write a description of the climax scene of the story. They imagine what the main characters might have said on the scene and incorporate quotes from the characters that fit. The second article is an editorial about whether it is acceptable to poach or not. The third article is a book review. The students create the paper in MS Word and use a variety of word processing skills– section breaks, borders, column changes. All of my students’ finished products are pretty impressive.

danny newspaper sample

  • Look at copies of your local newspaper before starting this assignment. Note common layout details on the newspaper and incorporate those into the assignment– newspaper name, date, volume number, author byline… Also note the writing style in a paper. Important facts are in the first paragraph followed by lesser details.

I have many low prep, high engagement novel units available in my teacher store. Click the bold novel titles above to be linked to the resource listing, or CLICK HERE to see the full list.